Before Dee could answer, he looked the cop straight in the eyes. “I’ll tell you what, as the lady mentioned, we’re happy to move along now, but in case you feel the need to have Homeland Security check on me after I’ve gone—” He reached into the center console and extracted a business card. “Here’s all the information you’ll need. And you can turn on WNN or pick up any newspaper—in fact, I think this week’s copy of Time magazine too—and find out anything you want to about me. I truly am an open book.” He flicked the card at the cop before raising the window in the guy’s face and pulling away from the curb at the same time.
As he navigated the exit from the airport, he clenched his jaw, anger working its way through him from the inside to the outside. As many times as it had happened, it still filled him with nuclear-level rage. And there was no way to stop it, because he’d already done everything he could—gotten the top education in the country, dressed in the most expensive conservative clothes money could buy, worked with the wealthiest, most powerful people in DC. Hell, he was friends with the fucking president of the United States.
And still all they saw was a black man messing with one of their women.
“Teague?” Deanna said, her hand landing on his arm and squeezing.
He grunted at her, feigning complete concentration on driving.
“He was no one. Don’t let him get to you.”
He shot her a look that said her comments weren’t helping.
“Seriously? He just did what your parents always said everyone would. That kind of shit is why you left me the last time. Tell me that didn’t give you second thoughts.”
“Not a single one,” she answered firmly. “It pissed me off. It insulted me. It made me feel ashamed that people whose skin looks like mine would do these things, but it didn’t make me pause to think about you and me for even one second.”
He glanced at her as they rolled to a stoplight. “How can you expect me to believe that?”
The red light held steady as cars cruised through the intersection in front of them. Teague ground his teeth, wondering how everything could have gone south so quickly.
He felt her hand, warm and smooth on his chin as she forced him to look at her. And what he saw there was so beautiful, it nearly stopped his heart right in the middle of the busy street.
“I expect you to believe me because I lost you for twelve long years. I mourned you, I missed you, and I wished more than anything that I could have you back, undo that horrible mistake I made. If I didn’t learn from all that, then I don’t deserve you, Teague. But I did. I did learn. I learned that I can endure the moments like what just happened as long as I can be with you. I learned that I would rather be true to you and to us than live in some pristine prison where no one ever judges me.”
She stroked his face, and his heartbeat slowed, coming into line with hers, matching what he saw in her eyes, beat for beat.
“We are stronger than those people. We are stronger than that evil.”
He shut his eyes for just a moment, taking one deep breath before he opened them and turned back to the road, pressing the gas as the light switched to green.
Deanna dropped her hand back to her lap, but he reached over and held it in his. “How much you want to bet he goes straight to the airport newsstand to look at Time magazine when he gets a break?”
Deanna gave a weak laugh. “As long as he thinks I’m just a random white woman you’re making out with and not the reporter at the Washington Sentinel who’s supposed to be writing about your nomination.”
“Baby, trust me, that guy wasn’t smart enough to put two and two together even if we’d been wearing name tags with our jobs listed on them.”
She shook her head in disgust. “You’re probably right.” She let her fingers travel up his arm until she wrapped them around his biceps and squeezed, making an approving hum deep in her throat.
“We okay now?” she asked, shifting restlessly in her seat.
He smiled. “Yeah, baby, we’re okay.” He could see her wiggling around out of the corner of his eye. “Something bothering you there?”
“Nope. Everything’s good now. You just said so.”
He laid his free hand on her leg. “And yet you seem oddly uncomfortable.”
She cleared her throat. “I did what you said.”
He raised a brow but kept his eyes on the road.
Her lips tightened. “I don’t have any panties on, and things are getting uncomfortable.”
He choked trying to hold back his laugh.
She glared at him then. “Going commando isn’t the same for women. Especially when you’re with a guy who had his tongue in your mouth a few minutes ago, and keeps saying…” She waved her hand around in the air. “Sexy stuff.”
He lost the battle and burst into laughter. “Are you saying you’re bare and wet, baby?”
She groaned. “Yes, and I’m afraid it’s going to soak through the back of my skirt.” She pinned him with a scowl. “Underwear was invented for a reason.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear anything after yes, you’re bare and wet.” He grinned at her.
“How am I supposed to get from the car up to my apartment without embarrassing myself if the back of my skirt is damp?”
He moved his hand up underneath her skirt, stroking the silky flesh of her inner thighs as he went and eliciting a sigh from her.
“We’ll go to my place. It’s a very short walk from the car up the steps to my front door.” His hand moved higher, finding what was indeed her very slick core. “I’ll walk right behind you so no one can see that fine ass of yours all wet from how much you want me.”
She couldn’t keep up the scowl and faltered into a grin. “You’re impossible.”
“You love it,” he said, rubbing his middle finger across her clit and causing her to give a small yelp.
His other hand clenched the steering wheel, and he gritted his teeth with the effort to restrain himself and watch the road. His cock was as hard as granite, and he wanted nothing more than to pull over to the curb, pull her on top of him, and plunge into all that soft, wet heat.
Instead, he kept up his strokes, up and down over her clit. Her head pressed back against the leather seat, and her eyes drifted closed.
“You really should watch the road,” she gasped.
“I’m an amazing multitasker,” he growled. “I want you to come.”
“God,” she breathed out, her hips making tiny thrusts in time with his finger.
“That’s it, baby, work it. Think about me pounding into you. Imagine I’m inside you—big, hard—and I pump in nice and slow, then pull out even slower.”
“Oh God,” she cried out, and then she was coming. He couldn’t feel her contractions, but he knew what she sounded like when she did, and a few moments later, her entire body melted into the seat, her skin flushed and warm.
He pulled his hand back, putting his fingers to his mouth and licking them slowly. She muttered something that sounded like “my God” before she tugged her skirt down to a decent length, while he noticed that they were less than a mile from his house. Thank God.
“How the hell do you do that?” she asked, sounding more irritated than grateful.
He smirked, because yeah, he was pretty proud of himself.
“Baby, I know you. You love it rough with lots of dirty talk. You always have.”
She smiled, her lips closed as though protecting a very hot secret.
“And here we are,” he said, parking in the designated street space in front of his row house.
“Thank God,” she muttered.
“My sentiments exactly,” he added.
“Last one naked and in bed has to get us dinner,” she said, opening her car door.
He leaped out of the car, catching her midway up the stairs, where he swung her over his shoulder and carried her inside. It didn’t much matter who was supposed to get dinner. They never got around to eating.
Deanna smoothed he
r hair before she knocked on the door to Brice’s office.
“Come in,” he called.
She walked in to find him standing behind his desk, stacks of papers sitting six inches high all over the surface.
“Is it a bad time?” she asked, looking at the chaos.
“No, come on in,” he answered, picking a paper off the top of the nearest pile and flicking it into a recycling bin nearby. “Just doing a little housecleaning.”
She nodded and walked a few steps closer to the desk. “But don’t use that phrasing with the staff,” she warned. “They’ll think you mean to get rid of them, not just obsolete paperwork.”
He looked up at her. “Quit fishing. If I were going to fire anyone, I wouldn’t tip my hand.”
She swallowed, butterflies swirling in her chest. Now that she’d found Teague again, the very last thing she wanted was to have to change jobs to a paper out of town.
“Relax, Deanna,” Brice admonished, a wry smile on his face. “I was kidding. No one is getting fired.”
She took a relieved breath, and he gestured at the chair facing his desk.
“Have a seat.” He also sat, on the opposite side of the desk. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Well, I decided to chase down that information from your email yesterday. If it was true, I wanted to make sure to be the one to find it.”
“Good thinking. Any head start we have is usually not much. We might be good, but there are plenty of other good journalists around too.”
She shifted in her seat, trying to give the impression of confidence even though she felt unsure.
“I decided that the best place to find out the truth about Roberts’s brother was to ask his mom.”
He raised his eyebrows to communicate “go on.”
“I flew to Chicago to interview her.”
“How’d you get her to agree to that?” he asked, seeming impressed.
“I told her I was from his college, and that I wanted to write a story on his nomination. I didn’t say I was writing it for the college alumni magazine, but I may have implied it.”
He nodded, quietly waiting to hear what she’d discovered.
“Not only did she agree to go on the record about the whole thing, but she gave me a copy of the brother’s death certificate.”
He sat up in his chair. “Seriously? The Roland Smith in the California penal system records isn’t the same one?”
She shook her head firmly. “Nope.” She pulled the copy of the forged death certificate she’d paid a contact at the State Department for out of the small portfolio she held, and slid it across the desk to Brice.
“Here it is. I saw the original, and this is the real deal.”
He picked it up and looked it over, nodding his head after a few moments.
“I’ll send you a copy of the interview file so you can listen. It’s good.”
“Well, damn. Okay. I have to admit I was sort of hoping there was a story here, but I guess he really is as clean as he appears.”
Her heart beat slowed, and she stifled a relieved breath. Maybe she’d done it—saved Teague and his nomination. Maybe they were both going to get everything they’d yearned for all these years.
But simultaneously, a thread of guilt wound around her guts. She was a professional, she loved her job, cared deeply about journalistic ethics, and firmly believed in the importance of the media as the fourth estate. It was the press’s job to be above reproach, inform the public, and hold government and corporations accountable. Now she’d just become part of the problem.
But if she had to do it all over again, she would. Because she loved Teague Roberts more than she loved anything, even her responsibilities to the nation.
“I know you’re disappointed that this can’t give us the kind of story that’s guaranteed to pull in readers, but maybe we can salvage it anyway. What if I did the human interest side to the nomination. Tell about his childhood, the kind of place he grew up, the social and economic problems for kids in those neighborhoods, everything he overcame to get where he is—including and particularly his brother’s illicit activities and horrible death?”
Brice seemed to consider it for a moment.
“It won’t get the play that a scandal would…”
“I know, but that ship has sailed, Brice. We just can’t create something that isn’t there.”
He nodded, his eyes tired and defeated. “I know. You’re right, of course. And the human interest approach sounds good. See if you can get an interview with him about it. Since his mother agreed, he must be aware that you’re covering it.”
“Okay, I’ll get on it right away. I’ll do a great job, I promise. And I’ll tease it on my blog and also have some friends tease it to their viewers. Between everyone I know, we’ve got a reach of several hundred thousand. You’ll get good hits off it.”
He looked slightly more enthused than he had a moment ago.
“Great. I’ll look forward to it. Monday’s edition. Have it to me Thursday end of day.”
She nodded, then stood and left his office. But even though he’d been in agreement and she knew that she could produce a story that got a good amount of play, something still didn’t feel right, and that worried her. She’d always followed her gut as a reporter, and now it was telling her that she hadn’t heard the last about Roland’s death. But she put it on a shelf in the back of her mind and moved forward, because more than anything, she wanted the hope to be real, the good parts to be true. She really didn’t have room in her heart for anything else at this point. And more importantly, neither did Teague.
Chapter 14
Teague lifted the cell phone to his ear as he strolled along the sidewalk outside the Hart Senate Office Building. He was spending the entire day meeting with individual senators on the Judiciary Committee to answer any questions they might have about him or his appointment. The committee was scheduled to vote on his confirmation next week, and it was imperative that he convince two more members of the opposition party to support him.
“What’s up?” he asked Jeff as he stepped out of the flow of pedestrian traffic and pressed his back to the cold stone of the building.
“You have a few minutes?” Jeff asked.
“Yeah, I’m in between meetings, hiking around between the different Senate office buildings because, of course, they couldn’t put the members of the Judiciary Committee all in one.”
Jeff chuckled. “Well, I promised I’d get you more information on your tail.”
“Does it matter? Your guy seems to have scared him off, so he wasn’t terribly dedicated, I guess.”
“I think you’ll say it does matter once you hear the details.”
Teague sighed. He didn’t need this right now. The nomination was within his reach, but the last two members to convert were proving to be complicated, and he had to constantly watch that he didn’t squander too much of the president’s political capital.
“Hit me,” he finally told Jeff.
“The guy is a private eye, not particularly high end, does a lot of divorce stuff—trying to catch cheating spouses, that kind of thing. But it’s who hired him that matters to us—Brice Carter of the Washington Sentinel.”
Teague’s ears hummed with the whoosh of blood.
“What did you say?”
“The editor of the Sentinel, Brice Carter. He’s the one who hired someone to follow you.” There was a pause, then, “Do you have any idea what that’s all about?”
Teague gritted his teeth and reminded himself to breathe. “None. But I guarantee I’ll know before the end of the day. I’ll keep you updated.” He ended the call without waiting for Jeff to agree.
How he made it through the four hours’ worth of meetings with recalcitrant senators, Teague didn’t know, but when he walked out of the last one, his blood pressure was so high, he broke the handle on his attaché case simply from squeezing it too tightly.
He slammed the door to the Lyft car that met him down the stree
t from the senate office building and yanked his phone out of his breast pocket.
T: Are you done at work?
Her answer came immediately.
D: Yes, just finished.
T: Meet me at my place.
D: Okay, bossy.
Normally he would have smiled at that—continued to banter with her as he rode home—but not today. No, today he wondered if he’d been betrayed yet again. How could she be the reporter assigned to his confirmation and not know that her boss had hired a PI to follow him? It was possible, and also very unlikely. But she already knew his deepest secret. What reason would she have to use a PI? All she had to do was expose him. It was pretty simple.
His mind turned over the possibilities, examining things from every angle and coming up with nothing that made sense. All he knew was that he felt like he was being lied to and he didn’t like it. It made him ill, actually. Because he’d fallen for her—all over again. She was rapidly becoming the most important thing in his life, and the last time that happened, she’d nearly destroyed him.
It was only a few minutes after he got home that Dee arrived, letting herself in the way she did so many other evenings.
“Hey, hon,” she called when she walked in. He could hear her setting her bags down and taking off her shoes. It was frightening to realize that he knew her habits so well already. Next she would check her hair in the mirror hanging in his foyer, then she’d head straight to the kitchen for a glass of wine.
Sure enough, she turned the corner where he waited, leaning against the countertop, a tumbler of scotch in his hand.
“There you are.” She ran her hands up his chest as she leaned in to kiss him softly on the lips. He stood still as stone, even though every cell in him yearned to meet her halfway, press his lips to hers, and inhale that essence that was fuel to his soul.
“Teague?” she said, concern etched on her beautiful features. “What’s wrong?”
He took her hands off his chest and set her away from him. “We need to talk,” he said, pacing into the dining room.
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